SOME PROBLEMS IN APPALACHIAN TIMBER APPRAISAL 333 



acreage is cruised than is acquired. The qualifications and responsi- 

 bility for accurate cruising and appraisal are certainly considerably 

 more than those involved in timber sale work. On timber sale 

 work the questions of value, accessibility, and merchantability are 

 eventually determined in any locality by the purchasers of the 

 stumpage, and there is a gradual adjustment by that means. In 

 ;ippraising there are no basal data from which to start, but the status 

 of each case must be determined individually, and it must be 

 appraised at a price which will not ofily admit of its being purchased, 

 but will yet eventually allow its profitable operation by a purchaser 

 from the Government. Men who have been employed in this work 

 are preeminently suited for carrying out timber sales. In cases 

 similar to this, or wherever cruising work is to be continuous and it 

 is necessary to train men for the work, it is profitable to employ men 

 with the distinct understanding that they are to be used for cruising, 

 and that their rate of pay as cruisers will be increased as their capacity 

 for accurate \vork increases. A good commercial cruiser can readily 

 conmiand $10 a day, and since the entire success of an operation 

 depends upon a knowledge of the amount and value of the timber, 

 he is worth it. When timber is acquired on a close margin, he either 

 makes or breaks the operation. The hundreds of business failures 

 in Appalachian timber testify eloquently to the inadequacy 'Of many 

 commercial appraisals, and stress the desirability of developing and 

 retaining men with a high standard of efficiency in this strenuous and 

 exacting work. 



RESUME 



The chief difficulties vyhich have attended the appraisal of eastern 

 mountain lands have consequently been those of personnel and 

 technique, rather than of method. It is believed that other methods 

 might be employed which would give practically as accurate results 

 as the system used, though perhaps they would not be as flexible. The 

 paramount consideration has been to secure the integration of the 

 work by coordinating stumpage appraisals and the volume cruise. 

 It has been due to the lack of such coordination of lumbermen that 

 so many operations in the mountains of the southeastern states have 

 not been successful. The stumpage appraiser in Government purchases 

 fixes his stumpage value only after the elimination of grades 

 lumber which cannot be profitably handled and of material which 



